Time Management: Pareto’s Law and Parkinson’s Law for

Time Managment

I am constantly telling people you can spend a lot of time being busy and not accomplishing anything of any real value! I was originally introduced to Pareto’s Law and Parkinson’s Law in college while studying ; and to be honest with you I had not given any of them too much though until a few days ago.

I will start out with Pareto’s Law. Pareto’s Law is what many of us would call the 80/20 rule. Simply started 80% of results come from 20% of your inputs. So what Pareto would suggest is that you should look at your day, find the 20% of the things you do that produce 80% of your results and focus on accomplishing those tasks before any other. Simply applying this rule alone could dramatically improve your productivity. However, I think it important that you carefully examine your situation before taking this to extremes and trying to fire clients.

The second rule is Parkinson’s Law. This law states that work expands to fill the time available to its completion. So basically if you give yourself two weeks to complete a task it will take you every minute of the two weeks where the same task if given 48 hours could very well be accomplished in that time frame with no loss in quality. I will go back to my college experience for a good example of this principle. I got good grades in college… Most people would say I was a good student, but if I was given six weeks to finish a term paper when do you think I would have it finished? On exactly the day it was due and more likely on the hour it was supposed to be turned in. Did I consistently work on it over that six week period? No… I started out gung ho, and then said hey… I have six weeks. Then on the last three days I would spend 12 hours per day cranking out the paper. Think about your work projects and you will see we do the same thing. We just get paid more to do it now. So how do we use these two laws in conjunction to streamline our day? First, look at how you spend your time in the day and try to eliminate the 80% of your tasks that are basically unproductive. Second prioritize your projects, and shorten the time you give yourself to complete them. If it takes you four hours to complete a proposal why did you set the deadline for two weeks from now? Set it for one week from now, or better yet tomorrow. It doesn’t make you look un-busy to complete these tasks quickly. It makes you look efficient. By focusing on these two principles, you will accelerate your pipeline, and have more time to work with more customers and take the vacations you deserve!

~ Shyam Kumar Singh